Hexbear’s entire point in federating was to fuck shit up.

We are fascists for checks notes... not supporting ukrainian nazi militias in their struggle to purge ukraine of the ethnic russians.

we're ideologically much, much further away from Putin than they are. if he didn't intervene in Crimea or Ukraine but kept all his policies otherwise intact, including the ones repressing minorities and pro-market ones, he wouldn't be nearly as hated by these people.

libs fall over each other for the esteemed opportunity to lick the boots of the most depraved, most despotic, most comically evil politicians and oligarchs, with three exceptions: when they carry out those acts in a transparent way rather than hiding it behind veils of "we need to cut social security because of X"; when they use the state for economic interventions rather than free market "solutions"; and when they decide to snub America on a certain issue (but are otherwise perfectly willing lapdogs)

e.g.

unhinged rightwinger: "I will kill 100,000 poor people."

libs: "nooooo! we need to register with our local police department to hold a 1 hour march through the city and then get teargassed anyway and then mutter "just a few bad apples" on the way home! but it's important to remember that China does way worse things! stop using whataboutisms by bringing up America!"

unhinged rightwinger: "fine. I will reduce social security spending and cut funding to hospitals and homeless shelters (this will have the effect of killing 100,000 poor people)"

libs: "hm, yes, very wise, for I am also socially liberal but fiscally conservative and I think it's important to reach across the aisle and engage civilly with our opposition so that they will give us policies in return (they won't). the efficiencies in this sector will go up 4.7% according to this think tank's analysis..."

leftwinger: "we should increase funding to hospitals and build more houses in this city to fix the homelessness problem (this will have the effect of saving 100,000 poor people)"

libs: "noooo! you're using state funds which will increase the big magical national debt number! you're not allowing the free market to build the best and most efficient housing! we can't do this while there's inflation! read economics 101! some of those building materials come from Russia and China, you're a tankie!"

Shit like this always reminds me of how a big watershed moment for my baby leftist journey was finally coming to the understanding that these words have meanings that get warped like a fun house mirror in the U.S.

I just casually referred to Stalin as a fascist once in front of a non Anglo and they called me out for it. They weren’t even an overly ideological person they had just grown up in a non Anglo education system and to their ear calling Stalin a fascist was factually incorrect and sounds kinda idiotic to most non western ears. The self awareness this created was the start of a lot of of layers peeling in retrospect.

They were absolutely correct! Obviously! Whatever criticism you may have of Stalin, and I think we all have them, he was not a fucking fascist! Stalin could easily be one of the most pivotal figures in the DEFEAT of fascism in Europe and yet liberalism and propaganda and the myopic political lens that Americans are given to interpret the world drains all texture and greyness from history and leaves you with this shambling nonsense narrative where everyone who was opposed to the U.S. global hegemony post WW2 in ANY capacity is either a “fascist” or a footnote in the history books because whatever shot they had at the wheel was usurped by the State department.

All this is to say never stop bullying and always remember to remind anglos that the western narrative of history is far from universally accepted and full of gaping holes.

Hexbear might actually be one of the most non-bigoted places on the internet. we are militantly against bigotry. no epic logical debates here, you just get smacked in the fucking face by a banhammer if you try that shit here

the fact they think so many trans people are out and about fascists is fucking wild. plus they talk about blahaj being ran by trans people, which is true, but also ignore that the trans community on lemmy is largely here, and for very obvious reasons

I believe you, but i honestly can’t find anything fascist on their front page right now

No evidence, just vibes

Response 1 to that:

"I believe you, but i honestly can't find anything fascist on their front page right now"

Lol maybe they shouldn't believe a claim that has no evidence!

Response to that:

"Give it time. You'll stumble across a pro-Putin post eventually."

Since when do leftists support a capitalist like Putin? This is what late-stage Russia Derangement Syndrome looks like.

I really don't get how people can't understand that it's possible for a person to support something and also admit it's flaws. Like, people are really out here not understanding dialectical thinking. It IS possible for something to be two things at once.

I believe you, but i honestly can’t find anything fascist on their front page right now

Some of them are close to figuring it out.

Yeah that didn't make sense to me either. Is tankie good to them now? These people are driving themselves insane.

"During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative." -Michael Parenti

Living rent free in their heads

why do they care about this lol

It's a comm dedicated to fediverse lore and drama.

I enjoyed this. It's extremely difficult to understand and feels somewhat like the internet equivalent of poking your fingers through someone's brain made up of a mess of overlapping thoughts.

As always, your art is an inspiration

shitting on the global hegemonic imperialist power into which the exploited labor of billions feeds is "contrarian". of course.

I’m not a fan of imperialistic western behavior either

oh no, they better not follow it up with a b--

but

lmfao.

doesn’t make China a positive influence on the world stage

I'm a little confused by what metric China isn't a positive influence on the world stage. sure, call them 1985 george ornell aminal farm authoritaritarians all you want inside their country, continue to make social credit score jokes like a dipshit, whatever, but China hasn't declared war on a country in decades and they've actively pumped one trillion dollars into infrastructure projects in developing countries, forgiving debts as often as not. meanwhile, the US pumps trillions of dollars into murdering civilians into several of those same countries.

Going into conversations with the staunch belief that you are correct and that evidence is ad hoc. You can either convert to my way of thinking or be foolish.

Nuance that changed my mind could never change theirs when it's spoken from my mouth. It's actually deeply frustrating for me and makes me feel like I'm not being listened to no matter how much I try to validate them until the anger is pushed down in my mind. The incuriosity that they might be wrong, the ignorance that the world may not be as it seems to you, or the lack of awareness of what a persuasive argument looks like makes me want to detach from a person. I try with active listening to be able to see other points of view so when I don't get it in return it sucks. It just so happens that's also how libs talk to lefties on some "Bernie is my abusive grandpa" shit.

Word. It's hard to stay nuanced when you're constantly beating back bad faith crap but the effort needs to be made. Sucks that it takes one sentence to scream "TANKIES" and like eight pages to explain anything real.

It would also be easier to be more critical if the USSR hadn't collapsed and we still had 2 major socialist powers instead of having to put all our current hope in China to give socialists worldwide breathing room to organize and actually have our own revolutions

"I can find no evidence for this but I believe you"

welcome to the new SRD. thanks, I hate it.

would really like to know why we're just recreating reddit.

Not necessarily, I wouldn't call dunking on libs "fucking shit up". Our activity in threads posted on other instances can be summarized as us providing a leftist perspective that would not have been there if not for federation. Dunking is what we then do to liberals who respond to said perspective in bad faith. I think that's actually good for the federation, not destabilizing.

We're getting on well with Lemmygrad and I think we're doing okay with Lemmy.ml

There's a profound difference in world view between what we're doing and most of the rest of the world. There aren't a lot of hard line left anglophones running around, and the ones who are usually aren't extradordinarily online assholes. Our culture was going to class enormously with the average liberal Democrat voter and most of their ideological fellow travellers.

I think federation is a good idea, but you need each instance to be very roughly speaking similar languages and having similar views about the world, at least to to the point where you can have discussions without immediately flame wars breaking out. That's a hard sell between hard line leftists and libs right now because we've got a pretty solid theory for why things suck, whereas libs can't understand why most things suck while still being libs. They have to continue to believe in the institutions and the constitution and the democrats and all that shit, or their woldview collapses. We know that their worldview is bullshit. So it's hard to have any kind of conversation about any concrete topics before a leftist says "Actually things suck because neoliberalism and democrat leadership" and then a liberal's head explodes.

I’m glad your instance federated with us as there isn’t much conflict between our instances

You should have gotten reconnected before all the redditors realized their beloved snoo was covered in smallpox and blamed the natives for it.